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Category: genetics
Small Study Shows One-time Cell Therapy Can Control HIV Infection
Unlike previous HIV “cures” involving cancer patients given bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection, researchers said CAR-T could be used by a much broader patient population. The Phase 1 trial involved CAR-T, a one-time therapy in which a patient’s T-cells are extracted, altered and multiplied in a lab and infused back into their body. In this case, the CAR-T targeted the CD4 and CCR5 binding sites of the HIV.
Of three trial patients treated with a standard CAR-T dose, researchers said two maintained undetectable to very low levels of HIV after stopping antiretroviral therapy — one for over two years so far and another for nearly a year. “The two that have been off (HIV drugs) the longest and doing well were importantly diagnosed pretty quickly and put on therapy pretty quickly,” said Dr. Steven Deeks, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and the study’s lead investigator.
Currently, CAR-T treatments are available for several types of blood cancer, and are being developed for autoimmune diseases like lupus and scleroderma. Tap the link to learn more about the recent study.
Re-engineering an HIV patient’s own immune cells to find and destroy the virus succeeded in controlling the infection in a small first-in-human study, but researchers said work is needed to confirm the findings and determine which patients are most likely to benefit.
Why Some People Have Endless Energy (And Others Never Will)
From the article:
To put this in quantitative terms: consider an individual at the 5th percentile of genetic vitality. Even with an impeccable lifestyle, such a person might only reach the 25th percentile of vitality (energy levels, mood, motivation). Now consider someone at the 95th percentile of genetic vitality. Even with a mediocre or actively harmful lifestyle, this person might still operate at the 75th percentile or above. The gap between these two individuals, after both have optimized (or neglected) every modifiable factor, is entirely genetic.
The single most effective thing one can do to guarantee great energy, mood, motivation, metabolism, cognition, physique, and longevity is to pick the right parents.
This is not to say that lifestyle, hormones, and pharmaceuticals are unimportant. They clearly matter, often enormously. Rather, the point is that these interventions operate within a window whose size, position, and ceiling are defined by inherited genetic variation.
Vitality is affected by many things which I extensively discuss on my blog. These include metabolic health, hormones, inflammation, diet, exercise, and sleep, among other things. Each of these domains is important, and each is modifiable to varying degrees through lifestyle choices, pharmaceutical interventions, or behavioral change.
However, every one of these discussions has implicitly assumed a background variable that I have largely unaddressed: genetics.
Blood Test #2 In 2026: Biological Age, CVD Risk, Correlations With Diet
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Scientists recruit red blood cells to deliver genetic cargo with instructions to kill cancer
Scientists have developed a way to turn the body’s own immune cells into cancer-fighting agents—without removing them from the body—by using red blood cells to deliver genetic instructions. Current CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) therapies typically involve collecting a patient’s T cells, genetically modifying them in the laboratory, and then reinfusing them in a process that can take weeks. The new strategy aims to bypass that step.
In a study published in Science Translational Medicine, researchers at Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine in Hangzhou, China, report that they used engineered erythrocytes, or red blood cells, to carry messenger RNA—mRNA—that reprograms myeloid cells into tumor-targeting cells inside the body.
“Engineering myeloid cells with chimeric antigen receptors—CARs—holds great therapeutic promise,” writes Dr. Xiaoqian Nie, lead author of the investigation.
New recyclable protein textiles could cut microplastic pollution and lower clothing waste
The textile industry produces a substantial portion of the world’s waste, with only about 12% of fiber materials ending up in recycling. Textiles also account for much of the microplastics in oceans. During every wash cycle, synthetic fibers shed microplastics that are flushed down the drain and eventually enter aquatic environments. Increasing textile recycling alone won’t solve this problem because most petrochemical-based fibers are difficult to recycle and continue to release persistent microplastics throughout their life cycle.
Engineers from Washington University in St. Louis may have a solution, thanks to dedicated synthetic biology work in the lab of Fuzhong Zhang, the Francis F. Ahmann Professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and co-director of Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center (SMARC).
The results of that work, now published in the journal Advanced Materials, created protein-based materials, which are produced in bioreactors (think giant brewing tanks) using genetically engineered microbes. These materials can be readily recycled after use and remade into the same fibers over multiple cycles. In addition, any microparticles, if released from these fibers during washing, would be biodegradable.
Single-molecule RNA mapping may reveal how shape shifts steer health and disease
Researchers from A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore (A*STAR GIS) have developed a new method to study individual RNA molecules and reveal how their structures influence gene regulation, a fundamental process that affects how cells function in health and disease. Their work was published in Nature Methods.
RNA is best known for carrying genetic instructions from DNA to make proteins. However, RNA does more than act as a messenger. Like a string that can bend, fold and interact with other molecules, RNA can adopt different shapes that affect how it behaves in the cell. These shapes can influence how efficiently proteins are produced, how long RNA molecules last, and how diseases such as viral infections progress.
Until now, studying these structures in detail has been difficult because RNA is highly flexible and dynamic. Most existing methods only provide an average picture across many RNA molecules, making it harder to see how individual RNA molecules may fold differently, even when they come from the same gene.
Scientists accidentally discover DNA that breaks the rules of life
A routine experiment with a new single-cell DNA sequencing method turned into a surprising scientific twist when researchers stumbled upon a bizarre genetic code in a microscopic pond organism. Instead of following the near-universal “rules” of life, this newly identified protist rewrites how genes signal their end. This unexpected discovery challenges long-held assumptions about how genetic translation works and hints that nature may be far more flexible—and mysterious—than scientists realized.